


Into the Deep End

by ParadoxR



Series: The Rest You Earn [5]
Category: Stargate (1994), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Beginnings, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Love/Hate, Military, Minor Character(s), Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxR/pseuds/ParadoxR
Summary: Jack needs all the help he can get at this point, but he’s not going to push her. She’s going to jump. (Standalone)





	1. Going to Be Rough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my beta, bethanyactually! Rated for some heavy cursing. Canon compliant and standalone, though the spare characters are from the fanfic series.

**Captain Carter’s Reinstated Lab, 0259 Hours on 14 February 1997 (Day 3 of the SGC):**

“Get your rookie ass outta bed RIGHT NOW, Cherry!”

Sam bolts awake by banging her head on a computer screen.

“SOME of us have REAL work to do!”

She slides over the lab bench as her brain flicks on. The rickety office chair she slept in for almost two hours crashes onto the concrete.

“And none of it involves waiting for YOU!”

Sam jerks open the door and lands toe-to-toe with Kawalsky. The last of his spit mists in her face as he pulls back to reveal another twenty commandos lining her hallway. On the ground, suspended in pushup position.

Sam is at attention. She’d been expecting something like this, but she guessed the uniform wrong. They’re all in BDUs.

Charlie scans her fitness suit and spins on his heel to yell some more. “Time for a run, gentlemen. _Somebody_ needs to change uniforms.”

It elicits glares but no voices as twenty commandos jump up and start running in formation for the stairs. Sam falls into step and reminds herself not to look embarrassed. If they’d wanted to avoid this, Major Kawalsky would’ve answered her question two hours ago before he decided to become a drill sergeant.

Running the three stories to her quarters and switching into woodland camouflage over thermal gear takes Sam just under a respectable four minutes. That much she’s ready for. The scene outside is the problem. There are no impatient commandos doing pushups in her doorway anymore. Now they’re outside _Daniel’s_. This is going to be rough.

“Are you SERIOUSLY not hearing all this, Jackson?!” Charlie adds his pounding over the sound of twenty men belting the military Code of Conduct and jumping up and down between pushups. They just counted number sixty-four.

Sam joins the end of the row without comment.

Daniel finally creaks open his door and looks out from worried if hooded eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Charlie stays obnoxiously loud. “TEAM BONDING! Get your geek ass in uniform right now or give up all this crap about Gate travel!”

Daniel squints without his glasses. There are like two dozen green blobs crammed in his hallway doing the same jumping pushup over and over again. They seem about as angry as black ops guys might be waiting for him at three AM on Valentine’s Day. He closes the door and scrounges for a t-shirt and his last pair of blue fatigues. He’s not sure who else sleeps on this sublevel, but they definitely aren’t anymore.

“You’d be DEAD by now, kid!” Charlie resumes pounding on the door seventy seconds later. “You and everyone whose six you should be covering! I’d break this door down if you’d earned that uniform! MOVE!”

Daniel scrambles haphazardly into his new boots and jacket as he opens the door.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WEARING?!” Charlie snatches the shirt he’s still buttoning and kicks both untied boots out from under him. “You can’t even wear a SHIRT?! You don’t need BOOTS in a FIREFIGHT?!” He drops the doctor on the concrete. “You can’t handle _clothing_ , and you want us to give you a _wormhole_?”

“Sir.” Sam’s voice snaps from the formation just after jumping pushup number eighty-two. “Permission to—”

“MOVE, Cherry!” Charlie spits theatrically. “Fix this!”

Sam immediately launches at the drowsy civilian.

Daniel almost manages to stand before Sam bowls him over again and ricochets into his closet.

“Put these on.” She chucks him a standard issue thermal shirt and long johns.

Daniel gets hit with both and fumbles to unbutton his shirt.

“Don’t do that. Slip the whole thing over your head.” Sam proceeds to grab it and fix his misaligned buttons automatically. She has his belt strung in his BDU trousers while Daniel is still hopping around in his boxers with the long johns.

“Um, so good morning.” Daniel sits to scramble back into his pants.

Sam finishes relacing is boots and stuffs his feet in herself. “You really would be dead by now, you know. I’d hate to see you in an ambush.”

Daniel winces but bends down to tie his own shoes. “Sam, really, I can…do that.” Turns out he can’t, based on whatever knots she’s looping around his ankles. He tries to refold his collar and she’s still done before him.

Sam then lifts up his jacket to yank back his t-shirt slack and jerk sideways his belt.

Daniel chokes out loud. At least they’re finally getting to know each other this morning. Sam jerks open the door before he’s really mentally prepared for it.

Charlie glances at his boots and doesn’t bother checking the rest. “Let’s get this thing started, boys!” He grins cheerily as the group bolts to their feet and runs back toward the stairs.

Daniel tries to stay beside his chaperon. “Where are we going?”

Sam has no clue, but she’s pretty sure it’s going to hurt.

 

Daniel accidentally bumps several gruff sergeants as the formation comes to a rapid halt. They’ve only run a few corridors, but he’s not sure where they are.

Charlie acknowledges the room guard and swipes open the door. “Gear up, folks!”

Sam and Daniel wait their turn as men zip quickly through the storeroom, but Sam isn’t surprised to find a hundred pounds of gear waiting for her. She spent most of the Gulf crammed against similar stuff, but carrying it for days in higher gravity will take a lot of practice. She inspects both of their training rifles by rote and grabs the conversion bolts someone hid under a poncho liner.

Daniel resigns himself to standing like a four-year-old as Sam dresses him again. He tried some of this stuff yesterday—five hours ago—but this is far worse. Heavier, and he’s not even carrying everything they are. His shoulders ache just watching the commandos do pushups on their massive rucksacks, but he manages to buck himself up as they head for the elevators.

Except that they take the stairs.

Daniel concentrates on his ragged breathing and the steps blur by. Eventually he stops moving, and it takes a while to realize his pack is snagged on the utility closet. The sublevel _twelve_ utility closet. “Where do you…we’re going?” He wheezes through all the dust they’ve kicked up.

Sam is untangling him automatically while trying to ignore how far ahead Kawalsky’s guys are getting. “I’d guess the surface.”

Daniel almost falls. “The _surface_?!”

“Just for a couple hours.” Sam ignores the newest deliberately sexist cadence song echoing down at her by fieldstripping an empty M9 in her hands. “Let’s go over some basics in the meantime.”

Daniel struggles with another breath as they start walking again. “That’s okay,” another rasp, “save your energy.” Then he looks sideways to see her even stride and up toward the sound of commandos belting at the top of their lungs. Never mind. “You can go with them if you want.”

Sam doesn’t stop her disassembly as she glares up the stairwell. “I’m not leaving you here.” Though the déjà vu of letting guys this cocky rampage around Cheyenne without her is unpleasant. She holds up the pistol’s slide assembly in explanation nonetheless. By sublevel six she’s shown Daniel most of the reconnaissance and survival gear someone attached to her vest.

Daniel really needs to start processing at least some of what Sam says. He’s fast with languages and all, but her last four sentences were entirely acronyms. “You…don’t have to do this. I mean…appreciate it, but…” He staggers upward and focuses on breathing.

Sam quizzes herself silently as they walk.

 

That climb becomes the longest fifteen stories of Daniel’s life. He crumples against the nearest stationary object outside and stings his lungs with pre-dawn air. It’s freezing, but at least the snow on the ground has turned to rain.

Sam opens Daniel’s pack and hands him a fleece jacket without comment. The commandos have deliberately muddled their tracks out here, and the rain is rapidly making it worse.

Daniel sucks down more air and wonders if he has to somehow get this jacket under the ballistic vest that’s now burrowed into his flesh. “Sorry they got so far ahead of us.”

“It’s okay.” Sam tries not to sound uptight as she studies where the gray downpour is further muddling the trails of twenty commandos who randomly skipped backwards, log walked, and bombshelled into the woods.

Daniel watches intently as she paces around tracking the black ops guys. “You’re really good.”

Sam snorts.


	2. What You Give

**Cheyenne Mountain Topside, 0346 Hours on 14 February 1997 (Day 3 of the SGC):**

“Weren’t we here before?” Daniel whispers loudly toward Sam’s back. He just can’t seem to creep through the dark fog and sodden ground the way she is.

“Shh!” Sam bites back her frustration. Yes they have; the trail turned around minutes ago. But there’s nothing she can do about it. And it probably means an ambush. She squints forward to where the ground drops away sharply and then lies flat in the snow to push the last few branches aside. She raises her rifle’s scope and peeks through the darkness down the steep bluff.

“SERIOUSLY, Cherry? You’re LATE.” Someone spins to glare up at her as if by magic. “Do you _always_ crawl everywhere or is it just past your bedtime?”

Sam lowers her rifle and refuses to scowl at the mass of commandos exercising and now laughing in the swamp below her. She grabs Daniel and slides more than rushes down the snowmelt to meet them, which only serves to increase their laughter. Sam splashes into the muck and immediately plops down for flutter kick number sixty-seven anyway. Kawalsky isn’t scaring her off that easy, not after the mess he and O’Neill made on the first mission.

Charlie looks over at them both around flutter-kick one hundred. Carter is keeping pace sourly, but Daniel still hasn’t moved since he skidded down the hill. Ah well. “So now that we’re all warmed up…” the major flips onto his stomach with a yell. “LOW CRAWL TO THE RIDGETOP!”

Sam repositions on autopilot before remembering to check for Daniel. He’s whipping around bewilderedly as twenty commandos land face down in the swamp around him. Someone grabs him by the boot and yanks him away from her. Sam pushes her cheek into the mud starts dragging herself up that steep slope and in front of him.

Daniel splashes into a puddle ten yards away. This is ridiculous, two dozen grown soldiers just decided to lay down and drag their faces up that muddy rock face. He wipes off his glasses and tries to mimic them in the scant moonlight anyway. He immediately kicks a bunch of rocks loose and slides back into the mud. You can’t climb anything like this. And they are so much quieter than him; it’s almost creepy. So much that he screams at the first explosion.

Daniel’s hands clamp over his neck as another bomb buffets them. It’s two more blasts before he realizes the sound is fake, and by then the smoke is impenetrable. Chain guns hammer out his hearing. A water jet shreds loose his grip, and something strikes his helmet so hard his head bounces. All he hears are guns. The shadows have left him behind.

So he grabs another clump of mud and drags toward them. The next blast of water floods his entire throat. He sputters as mud geysers erupt through the dense smoke. He can’t breathe.

Something slams his nose in the mud. “WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR RIFLE, CHILD?!”

Daniel peeks up painfully and pulls off his glasses. A massive figure looms over him, among hundreds kicking and cursing in the haze.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR FUCKING RIFLE?!”

Daniel fumbles at his now-vacant side.

The shadow slams it back down on top of him.

“YOUR WINGMAN NEEDS YOUR HELP, IDIOT! WHERE’S YOUR WINGMAN?!”

Daniel jerks around bewilderedly. This time the resulting kick fills his entire mouth with mud. He coughs and retches around the taste of gunpowder.

“What’s the range of a hand-thrown frag grenade? Under what triage conditions do you administer CPR in battle?”

Daniel fights to stop retching. “I…” What?!

“YOUR TEAM IS DYING, YOU IDIOT!” The shadow kicks him in the stomach. “How do you execute a front takedown from a modified seatbelt clinch?! What do you look for in a temporary fighting position? Define a suitable linear checkpoint for your navigational missions. Your pistol is malfunctioning, fix it!”

Daniel’s hand fumbles around his leg.

The shadow grabs his unattended rifle. “BANG. You’re dead. Redundantly.” The ghost shoves him back down to the frigid swamp. “Just _listen._ And read.” It disappears.

Daniel jerks back as something huge splashes down in his face. He squints through the blowing smoke and rising sun to see a plastic bag jammed with a six-hundred-page book. _Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks – Level 1_. Below it someone’s scrawled ‘Year 1 for the Desk Jockeys’. Daniel clamps his eyes shut and shudders to his own pulse.

But then he eventually does hear more. He can now, far enough below all that chaos.

“Describe the different blood trails of combat tracking. And what’s the secondary troubleshoot for a jammed SCUBA rebreather?! Briefback a leader’s recon patrol plan. How do we prevent another My Lai massacre? Answer me in Spanish, Sergeant. NOT MAINLAND SPANISH, YOU IDIOT! Pick something colonial!”

“I can read your fucking uniform, Doc! What makes you more useful than every other Special Forces, Ranger, Freefall Jumpmaster, Expert Combat Medic?! —Hey, that idiot officer just broke forward of our line! SERGEANT! WHAT DO WE DO NOW?!”

Daniel squints toward the sunrise from where his cheek is frozen into the mud. A dozen shadows with way too many rank stripes and smoke grenades are stalking around above him. They’re throwing things, shooting guns, and pointing water jets straight into the faces of the twenty people dragging themselves up a frozen mud slope.

Daniel slowly realizes that he’s the only one who flunked out at the stuff he could just read. This is some kind of professional evaluation.

“Brief your team on explosively breaching the Control Room! And give me a final order from an Objective Rally Point—contrast the Rhineland crisis and Korean War in pursuing _status quo ante_! STOP GURGLING AND SPEAK THE FUCK UP, CHERRY!”

“How did ‘win the peace’ avoid nuclear detonation in the Cuban Missile Crisis? Hey, your best friend just lied to our Team Sergeant! SOLDIER?!” Whack. “WHAT, YOU’RE JUST GOING TO TALK ABOUT CUBA?”

The crazy thing is, everyone keeps answering. Clawing through the explosions and plastic bullets and questions about 1951 Vietnam to narrate combat orders, battlefield surgery, UAV strikes, or Pashtun cultural cues. All as they’re slammed in the face with rubber balls and soaked to the bone with a giant fire hose.

Daniel spots Sam a few lifetimes later, when someone drags her up and points into the woods. She starts running with some other shadow. Daniel’s not sure if that’s a pass or a fail, but she’d gotten a good distance up the slope and still has her rifle. And she can somehow still run. He lays there shivering and thinking about it.

Suddenly, the noise stops. Daniel’s ears screech painfully at the void. Men talk to each other quickly. It’s over.

“You okay?” Charlie calls down to the still-prone doctor with a smirk.

Daniel blinks into his mud puddle and then clambers up to join the commandos already donning their packs. “Um, yeah. I was…I can take it.” He shuffles over to his ruck and kneels to wrestle into its waterlogged straps.

Charlie watches the civilian carefully on his way to the valley’s tree line. “Okay. Just remember it’s not about what you take.” He reaches down with his team and jerks a full-sized telephone pole up from the bushes. “It’s about what you give.” The major smiles and resumes a baritone roar. “Nice job, folks! I think we’ve earned a change of scenery!”

By that, Charlie apparently means they can run from that steep valley to a frigid lake with rucksacks and telephone poles on their shoulders. Daniel abstains from the phone poles, but that muddy lake is still over an hour from where he strapped on all this stuff and bungled a bone-jarring battle. He nearly collapses with his pack when he drops it.

Charlie smiles and snags him by the vest automatically. “Easy, bud. Just sit down. You’re done.” He digs into a cargo pocket and comes up with an MRE.

Daniel somehow manages to grab it as he falls. There’s coffee inside. He struggles with frozen hands and the heater bag for a minute before giving up and shaking the grounds onto his tongue. A dozen guys sprint past him in combat wetsuits as he does, straight into that muddy, frigid lake. He swallows the entire pack, opens an energy bar, and watches them swim races in full combat gear. The guys on the shore are churning out more sit-ups with their massive telephone poles.

Daniel wills the peeping sun to warm him up and wonders how he ended up doing all this. One of the guys reaches over mid-situp and throws something else at him.

Daniel nearly jumps into a tree. It’s a snake. It’s a live snake.

The commandos immediately erupt in laughter. “Relax, kiddo. We thought you wanted to be a ‘snake eater’ like us!”

Daniel scrambles wildly against it, desperately trying not to touch the thing that somehow got _inside_ his vest. He slams it repeatedly with his hanging rifle.

“Whoa, whoa. Your rifle’s way more dangerous than that little guy!” Two hands immediately swoop down for the weapon and the snake. “Glad you’re empty. Fix yourself.”

Daniel blinks bewilderedly three times before smearing at the mud on his web vest. Someone just threw a live snake at him.

The man smirks. “Hold on, don’t strangle yourself either.” He studies the foot-long animal carefully, looking downright saddened for the maimed creature that’s dripping blood through his fingers. “Sorry about that, gal. Guess we oughta put you outta your misery.” His knife materializes along her head right before he tosses the carcass back at the snake thrower. “Better eat that if you’re gonna harp so much on the snake eater nickname.”

The younger man catches it mid-pushup with a grimace. “Yes, Gunny.” He bites into it without swallowing and passes it to his buddy. The guys take their medicine raw, still laughing at the civilian.

The older man kneels down to untangle Daniel’s gear himself.

It’s only then that Daniel finally recognizes him in the sunlight: the shadow who’d grilled him during the mud battle. He’d also lectured Daniel the night before, though about yet another kind of cluelessness. “Thanks, Gunny.”

The retired Marine looks up with a grim smile. “Yeah, well. Learn something, would ya? Before you get someone bigger than little snakey killed.” He situates Daniel’s vest and then flexes his own leg on the way back to his team’s telephone pole. “So…anyone else gonna need like four more knee surgeries to hack it through another war?”

Every sergeant there raises his hand. They’re all now doing one-armed pushups with their feet on logs.

The Marine cranes his head toward Kawalsky and the two team captains with him. “Hands up, gentlemen. Plenty of time to overextend your glory days with how little we’ll get to consult your cozy headquarters.”

Charlie and his captains chuckle and raise their hands.

Daniel just sits there quietly and stares at the MRE bar he dropped.

* * *

It takes Sam most of her first mile to ignore the silt abrading open her feet and chest. She’d taken extra hits for trying to help Daniel the whole time, though everyone was happy enough to let her stay smack between him and that armored water cannon. She liked the drill otherwise, though, particularly the chance to refine some ideas about Gate-compliant artillery strikes. One of her harassers even took notes. At least someone’s starting to listen to her this time.

Sam smiles and spits more mud from her mouth. Sodden boots or not, she likes any miles she can get sans lewd cadence songs and jabs about being unqualified for the trailblazing team _she_ got activated.

So it’s not until about another quiet mile in that Sam’s hackles start to rise. They prick at her drenched body armor, and she resists the urge to crouch and shoulder her rifle. She will not be the one that blows a Gate evacuation by being too wired about an ambush. So instead she tightens her practiced scan of the forest, trying ineffectually to match minds with seasoned commandos picking an ambush layout. One of their medics is with her, but she doesn’t think much of it. They never move forward alone.

Sam throws herself headlong into the snow three minutes later. Ambush. She rolls for cover and aims reflexively at the echoing barrage, groping for a grenade. The attackers are too far away, though; she registers the sounds quickly. She leans into her rifle and searches for that medic trailing her.

The radio on her vest springs to life theatrically. “I’m pinned down! Get me out of here!”

Sam keys the radio, but it sparks and dies on cue. She scans the sodden forest from her spot among the tree roots. Position and rate of fire, key terrain, vulnerable flanks, concealed approaches, secondary ambushes, indirect threats, probable enemy actions. She pulls back and listens carefully as the training rounds don’t snap any closer to her head. She can try to move covertly, and she recognizes this L-shaped attack. She can do this. She won’t leave him.

The echoes tell her there are probably eight people shooting at her team, including two machine guns. That’s a serious setup, but Sam knows what the counterattack should look like, both on paper and from long months in the Quantico forests. She identifies a reachable flank amid fog and doesn’t falter creeping into toward grenade range. Counter-ambush is by far her best set of battle drills, given what Giza focused on facing off-world.

Probing machine gun fire suddenly shreds the leaves around her as she tries to advance. Sam presses her cheek even deeper in the snow and replans. If this were easy, they wouldn’t bother testing her on it. Or training themselves all those years. The Jaffa they’re imitating probably wouldn’t’ve bothered to either. And Sam is reminded of all that by the training knife that materializes along her jugular.

“You know, I used to brag I’d rubbed off on you more than this.”

Sam’s eyes snap closed of their own volition. Jonas Hanson? Here?!

“CEASE FIRE!” Jonas releases his ex-fiancé with a familiar smirk and turns to the men echoing his command around the glen. “Okay now, boys, that’s your fun for the morning. Let’s get back to work.”

The chaos dissipates on cue and is rapidly replaced by snickering as ten more men appear from the frigid snow. She completely missed the secondary ambush. Jonas has all eighteen of his guys here. Sam mostly avoids their mocking looks until Jonas throws a wetsuit and gas mask at her head with another smile. She catches both awkwardly and tries not to think of all his guys eyeing her in the woods as she pulls the wetsuit up to her waist and redresses in her still-soaked gear. Jonas’s men heft up their machine guns jocularly and abandon her in the forest.

The medic ostensibly on her team barges up angrily. “I didn’t hear word one from you through all that! You want to _command_ without talking? Run up on a wall of fire alone without even knowing your own guys are?!”

Sam grimaces at the loud act, annoyed that he’s still hounding this scenario. “They sabotaged my radio for the training exercise. This is an individual test series.” As if he didn’t know that.

The medic yanks on her radio uninvited, dragging her with it before detaching it fully. He opens it with a practiced hand and fixes it as if he knows it blindfolded. Then he tests everything successfully and shoves it back at her. “I was gonna give you some points for this before. But a command officer running around a combat zone with a non-working radio, not even trying to fix it?!”

He continues muttering about her so loudly that Sam eventually realizes he really is upset. He’s the gatekeeper here, assessing some incompetent kid who’s vying to hold the lives of him and all his buddies in her hands someday soon. And here Sam is, not even bothering to push the limits of the first test they’ve given her on day one. “Lesson learned, Sergeant.” She tries to sound reassuring.

He jerks away from the comment and starts running again. Sam falls into step, pushing the pace and dutifully donning and clearing her gas mask by rote when he does. The mask hampers her breathing immediately but fortunately keeps her expression hidden. Which is good, because she’s made enough of a fool of herself in the last hour. And she doubts this gear is even scenario training. The mask and wetsuit are probably just meant to screw with her more.

 

It works. Sam’s lungs are completely spent by the time she even notices the sounds of activity in front of them. They come up on a busy lake soon after, and Sam struggles through the mask to pick out Kawalsky and keep pushing the pace on the third of her cross-country miles.

“CHERRY! Mask off!”

Sam skids toward the voice and tucks her mask back into its pouch. Her lungs fight over the extra air as she tries to professionally pull off her vest and shrug into the rest of her wetsuit. Maybe paranoid, but—

“JUMP!” Charlie spits past her as she approaches.

Sam tries and fails to untangle herself before a running plunge into the lake. The five-foot drop submerges her violently, freezing and flooding her throat. And now she has absolutely no idea where he wants her to go. She surfaces to mourn the lost momentum and try to cough without hyperventilating.

Charlie chuckles to himself but cuts her a break from asking. She’s already failed. “Orange marker!”

Sam stops concentrating on air long enough to squint through shivering eyelids. Yes, next time plan and then jump. It takes her a precious thirty seconds of abused muscles to fix.

* * *

Sam has been swimming in the lake for almost twenty minutes by the time Daniel musters the energy just to change into drier clothes. He battles too much wet fabric and then and sinks onto a snowy tree stump to pull back into his boots.

“Hey there, Doc. Wasn’t sure I’d see you up here.” A sergeant closes his fly and stops at the tree line beside him. “You liking it?”

“Hi, Roy.” Daniel suddenly squishes forward into his first boot. “It’s, um…educational.”

Roy laughs and jumps up to a branch for some pull-ups. “You really think we want you learning to shout and lug telephone poles?”

“Then why are we doing this?” Daniel frowns at a rock stuck in his other boot.

“Bonding, mostly. Dangerous to do any realistic training without it.” Roy smirks as if he’s enjoying it and keeps doing pull-ups.

Daniel winces automatically. “Realistic training?” His entire body groans in argument.

The sergeant looks at him seriously. “ _Professional_ hard work, and not just physically. This crap’s complicated, Doctor, and we’ve gotta keep things stable and safe for everyone out there.”

Daniel fidgets at hidden line. “I get it.” Though he’s been fighting internally since Hammond and now everyone else rebuked him wanting to rush straight after Sha’re. “Can I, I mean, what help do you need?”

Roy lets the topic change and smiles through more reps. “Do you have another thirty Special Force Intelligence Sergeants, fifty Civil Affairs teams, and every interpreter in Task Force Orange in that boot? Because that’s what I need right now. Not sure about an archeologist, though.”

Daniel finally squelches into his second boot and tries to look more dignified. “I’m a linguist too.”

_“Yes Doc, but us commando linguists are really less about old pottery and more about scaling ice mountains, digging covert posts, decoding enemy intercepts, and then training guerrillas through a counterattack plan.”_ Roy smirks amiably and pumps out yet more pull-ups.

Daniel winces. Fair point. Also, he made it in Dari. _“You speak Pashto_ and _Dari?”_

_“Have to.”_ Roy flexes again. _“And Doc, I get that your old cave paintings don’t complain much, but your accents are truly terrible.”_

Daniel fidgets. “I’m better at listening. I could help decode these societies more broadly. I’d really like to.”

“Just don’t go getting too gung-ho again." Roy grunts through a final rep and starts doing leg lifts. “I know we make it look cool, but anyone who runs off half-cocked or sidelines someone more qualified in this business tends to get a lot of blood on their hands.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want that, Sergeant.” Daniel stands up as his full diplomatic self. “I definitely respect everything you do that I can’t. I’d never allow the military to put me in a spot like that.”

“I’d’ve hoped they never would.” Roy sours briefly before adding a chuckle. “But fortunately us grunts _really_ like training. No one could break into this career field with thirty languages, a hundred medals, a general’s star, and a battering ram. It takes a lot of long years no matter how cool you were in another life. And we were all very cool.” He taps the Ranger tab on his shoulder with a wink.

Daniel resumes an easy smile. “So what would you want me to do?”

“Pushups. I’m getting lazy just looking at you.” Roy raises his legs overhead to tap the tree branch again.

Daniel winces at having walked into that but drops into the snow without complaining. He collapses trying to finish four. “Sorry. I’ll work on this.”

“You better. Like your buddies’ lives depend on it.” Roy grunts out another strong rep. “But anyone can get fit, Doc. Having steady hands don’t make you a surgeon. You can’t substitute guys like us with regular military, much less with you. So you’re gonna need your own niche.”

Daniel rolls painfully onto his back. “The niches here are a little different than I’m used to.”

The sergeant tilts his head down. “It’s the service, Doc. Your niche is to spend your life honing whatever you’re best at that’ll best protect your people.”

Daniel stares up at the rain splattering on his glasses. “Agreed. I’ll figure it out.” He sighs and tries to think through the cold. Then he jolts upright at the sound of a huge yell and a splash in the water. It’s Sam. He bolts out of the tree line and squints across the lake. “Hey!!” She’s close now, and it looks like someone is trying to _drown_ her. That asshole Reid if he can tell from here. “HEY!”

The sergeant comes up and lays a firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Doc. You gotta let her work.”

Daniel spins toward him wildly. “ _Work?_ ”

Roy nods. “We call it drownproofing.”

 

Sam fights the hands swarming on her collar as they drag her under and bind her thrashing fists. Another force lashes her feet together, whirling her violently until an iron hand smashes her nose and blacks out her vision. She writhes and drowns as scarcely-trained instincts fight for control and to struggle for the correct solution. Suddenly her entire body ramrods straight, forcing itself to sink for a bottom to push off against.

Panic balloons in Sam’s flooded lungs as she falls deeper and deeper. Five feet, ten feet, twenty feet. There’s no ground. There’s no bottom. She chose wrong, and she’s in too deep to survive now. The little oxygen left in her brain redirects solely to the knot at her wrists. It cuts her skin while refusing to budge. This is it. They just refuse to trust her here. They’re going to kill her.

Sam’s drowned body collides with a wall of water. Her pallid face eventually breaks the surface, barely forcing each lung to sputter back to life. Something frees her wrists to fly upward, smearing blood all over the watch cap blinding her eyes. People are everywhere, but no sound. She’s sinking again. Her frozen hands dart for her bound feet, which only forces her lower in the water. She still can’t unbind them. She still can’t float. One hand automatically rediscovers the knife on her vest. She almost drops it.

“Jeez, just breathe already.” A Special Forces captain that unabashedly hates her guts tightens his hold on her collar. “It’s over. You failed. This one and the distance swim.”

Sam cuts free her legs and forces them to tread water on sheer indignation. “I’m fine.” And she squints at her wristwatch.

The captain drops his grip on her. Sam sinks to her chin in a panic before remembering to look even remotely composed. “We’re not timing you against new candidates, _Doc_ . This is for the _end_ of initial commando training.” He looks at her pointedly. “Unless you’d rather sit out the two years. Or forever.”

Sam manages to glare through the spots in her vision. “Where’s the underwater route?”

Reid accepts that with far too broad a grin and spins her toward the farther shore. “Underwater is always the black marker.”

Sam drops below the surface and automatically streamlines into a combat glide. She can’t see much at the moment, but at this point she doesn’t give a damn.


	3. Want Some Advice

**Cheyenne Mountain Lake, 0452 Hours on 14 February 1997 (Day 3 of the SGC):**

_Previously: Sam drops below the water’s surface and automatically streamlines into a combat glide. She can’t see much at the moment, but at this point she doesn’t give a damn._

“Goddammit!” The Special Forces medic drops from his pull-up tree indignantly. “You swore she wouldn’t push that hard!” Not that he ought to have believed it after she kicked him in the face during the deep-end drowning.

His captain pulls himself out of the water and shrugs. “She’ll be fine.” Though Captain Reid curses internally for the full two seconds it takes his safety divers to pull up Carter’s unconscious form. The senior officers are going eat his head if Kawalsky saw much of that from shore.

Sam sputters to life as something drags her from ice and clamps against her mouth. She barely thrashes enough to break free.

“Jeez. Calm down.” The medic strips off her gear enough to tuck in more heat packs.

Sam nearly punches him in the face.

“Hey, hey!” The sergeant snags both her wrists. “Seriously, you gotta stop hitting the doc.”

Sam finally blinks back into searing reality to see a medic examining her. Dammit. She cannot keep doing stuff like this. She has to make them keep her here this time.

The medical sergeant eventually sits back on his heels and nods. “Alright. You’re still alright.”

Sam forces herself to breathe without the second oxygen mask. She glares straight ahead, visibly pissed at herself. “What’s next?”

The medic tries to snort loudly over someone’s suggestion that she just suck their dick. “No more testing this morning, ma’am. Your vitals are stable, but they want you kept on basic deployable status.” He aims that last point at his own captain before glancing around the group of men exercising and sniggering around them. He decides that’s good enough to leave her and leads his crew off to monitor the other divers.

Sam squints behind the departing cadre to point as strong a look as she can manage at whoever just suggested she suck their dick. She may be a shivering mess, but she still outranks every damn one of them. Not that she knows who it was, though her money’s on the lone lieutenant there. He’s an outsider too, by his age and just Long Range Surveillance rather than special ops training. And he’s been leering at her since last night. Sam kicks herself all over again as they finish another fifty leg lifts and jump up for a sprint.

 

Daniel barely avoids a final stampede as he reaches Sam, and then gets blocked again as two guys fall out of the formation. He hangs back on the empty bank and strains curiously to hear. It’s some lieutenant even younger than Sam and that Marine who grilled him in the mud battle but saved him from the snake.

“Hey, Lieutenant. You say something back there? I couldn’t quite hear.”

The young officer smiles impishly but doesn’t repeat himself to the Marine. “Nah, nothing, Gunny.”

The sergeant nods. “Want some advice?”

It gets an easy shrug.

“Go fuck yourself.”

The young man blinks. “ _Excuse_ me, Sergeant?”

“I said go fuck yourself. Because she sure as hell ain’t going to.” He shakes his head in disgust. “And I’m retired, Lieutenant. You’ll call me Gunny. Go catch up with the run while I tell your CO to transfer you outta here before you can mouth off around some foreign king’s wife.”

Daniel raises both eyebrows as the lieutenant glares ineffectually but resigns to sprinting after his formation.

“Kids these days.” The sergeant somehow manages to sound even more revolted than he just did.

Daniel takes a second to realize the man is commiserating with him. “That really was nice of you.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “We’re good people, kid. Most of us.” The sergeant abandons Daniel’s affront and jogs over to Sam. “Ya alright there, _mon Capitane_?”

Sam snorts but lets him hover over her as she finally stands up. “Thanks for that, Chris.” She really needs to get better at handling these things. Especially now.

He smirks. “Least I can do. With you challenging commandos again, I’ll finally let Allie cancel our Showtime.”

Sam resists the urge to knock his shoulder. “Daniel, this is my second-in-command from Project Giza, retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant Chris Gedo. Gunny, this is Doctor Daniel—”

“We’ve met.” Chris waves at him with a grimace.

Sam raises both eyebrows between the two men.

Daniel steps forward with his hand outstretched anyway. “It’s nice to finally meet your properly, Gunny. Sam speaks very highly of you.”

Chris crushes his grip. “Hasn’t said much about you.”

Sam winces, which mostly serves to remind her how much she’s shivering. She shoots Chris her standard ‘play nice with the civilian’ look and steps away to where he dropped her pack on a waiting ATV. It takes a minute to put herself back together.

Daniel looks out over the lake again. “I can’t believe they really did that to her.”

Chris nods gruffly. “Way outta line. Hell, she’s teaching them three tech courses tonight.”

“I actually meant on a personal level.” Daniel frowns.

The sergeant shrugs undecidedly. “Cheap tricks.”

Sam looks up and is glad that her vision doesn’t dull. “Thank you both, but really none of this was personal.” Ostensibly. Her eyes drift along the lake buoys again. It definitely wasn’t textbook either.

Chris turns to her with a doubtful eyebrow. “Ma’am.” He gestures at the lake himself. “What color is the marker you were swimming for?”

“Black; the underwater course is always black.” But then Sam stops to actually look at it. She squints around curiously when she does, confused that her navigation this poor even after passing out.

Chris waves back as her eyes drift further off target. “You were right the first time.”

Sam returns her gaze to the edge of the lake curiously. And then resists the urge kick the mud bank in front of her. Mud that, incidentally, is the same color as the marker she’d been swimming for. Brown. The one Reid so helpfully directed her at. “I cannot believe I fell for that.”

“Eh. As long as you didn’t quit.” Chris cuffs her around the shoulders easily. “Passing out ain’t so bad. And if it makes you feel any better, you’d’ve fainted short of the black one, too. But didn’t it look twice as far?” He also takes the opportunity to steal back her rucksack and plop it on the ATV with Daniel’s.

It really does make Sam feel better, and not just because she’s again removed over a third of her total weight. “Honestly it seemed like even longer than a football field. I thought it was just nerves.” That and having just recently been drowned.

Her sergeant frowns. “You’ve really gotta master sorting that out, Cap.” It’s a friendly rebuke, though clearly not the first time he’s delivered it.

Sam nods. “And don’t accept direction from guys who’d rather drown me than let me serve where I did for years.” Though she mostly manages not to sound bitter anymore. She’s plenty used to it after O’Neill. Sam sighs and decides not to steal back her rucksack.

Chris grunts in agreement. “Yeah. That one sure got the blood flowing. Nice work on the knots at the end.”

Sam stumbles slightly at the belated realization that he was her safety diver. “I should’ve focused more earlier. I reacted like it was a bottom bounce.”

Chris keeps his grimace. “Not like we can know in real life, not unless we end up with crazy good intel about these bumblefuckvilles. You could’ve reached it though; it’s only like twelve feet.”

Sam blinks. The test is only nine, but it felt like at least twenty. “Oh.”

“‘Course the bottom is pure boot-suck sludge.” He frowns.

Sam forces down a glint of panic and starts leading them back to base. They have to slog the long way around the lake where it’s already being used for HAZMAT practice. Not coincidentally, since exactly zero of their pathogen containment protocols were fully tested before the trips to Abydos and Chulak. There’s about a 0.0000002 percent chance that Earth will be wiped out by a Gate-resistant plague within the week.

Sam eventually snaps herself out of the familiar lull of wet ruck marches. Her former 2IC is apparently her custodian now, though she’d very clearly asked him only to look out for Daniel. “Do you remember how I convinced you not to drown me back in ‘94?”

“There’s way less water in Nevada.” Chris smirks and thumps her back to check her balance again. “It ‘cuz you’re a damn good leader, Cap. Only reason I ever tolerate any officer.”

Her sigh is muted. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“Fortunately that’s when you do best. Otherwise you get all esoteric on us.” He smirks easily. “Believe me, I taught you everything you know. ‘Cept that physics stuff.”

Sam offers an obligatory smile, but it doesn’t really break her mood. “And then they’d let me in?”

Chris looks at her sideways. She’s in that mood again. “You know there’s a reason we train our new guys so close for so long, boss. But they might start by drowning you less.”

She shrugs at the familiar lecture. “I could train here forever and still get cut out like last time.”

Her 2IC shoves aside his own anger about that. “Good colonels are cool with real special ops scientists.”

“I’m a woman.” Sam sighs tiredly.

“You’re a _WHAT_?!” Chris spins around to look bewilderedly. “Holy shit! What was I thinking?!”

Sam finally chuckles. “Point taken.”

He takes a while to calm down his own laughter. “You know what a long a haul it is. You’re fine. Or you would be fine, if some idiot hadn’t started a war. But I’m counting on you to sort that out too, you know.” Chris grins widely. “I mean, there’s not a lab rat, desk rider, fighter jock, or janitor in the world I’d replace you with.”

Sam rolls her eyes. “Why thank you, Gunny.”

“Why you’re very welcome.” He smirks happily. “And I mean it, ma’am. Ain’t no flyboy, missileer, gearhead, intel officer—even chemist, though don’t tell my wife I said that—”

Sam chuckles as his list starts up again. “And how are Allie and the kids?”

Chris pivots affably. “Do remember how to distract me, I see.” He raps a rhythm on his chest plate, sending mud spatters everywhere. “Fantastic. Chloe keeps getting smarter in spite of me somehow. And now not only does she have to be an engineer, she has to log a hundred hours in special ops rescue helicopters during the Gulf, and I understand there’ll be something new about arm wrestling tonight.” He smirks widely as Sam’s smile evaporates. “Although for what I’m sure are entirely unrelated reasons, my wife intends to kill you next time she sees you.”

Sam grins. “I wanted to stop in tomorrow.”

Chris looks at her sideways as they move into the SGC clearing. “Glad you’re still a glutton for punishment.”

Sam cocks a sly look between him and the mountain entrance. “Stairs or ladder?”

He cackles. Daniel winces.

Chris gestures at the doctor amicably. “Let’s say stairs, for his sake.” He smiles at the guards checking their credentials.

Daniel keeps quiet until his lungs finally start thawing inside the mountain. “You know they also make elevators.”

“Sure do.” Chris gestures to one as they pass it. “They better all be jam-packed with the equipment Colonel Jackass ought to’ve brought down here last time and not thrown out.”

Sam cuts in with a careful grin. “You can go if you want, Daniel. Chris and I just need to talk initial technology mission prioritization and training.”

Daniel considers that topic for a second. Both how it might help him find a niche here, and how it’ll probably be all acronyms again. He shrugs and decides to follow them.

 

Sam keeps one hand on the stair rail in an overabundance of caution. She really is fine, but Chris keeps glaring at her whenever she lets go.

Daniel blinks down their endless steps and then back up at the military members. “Exactly how many stairs do you expect these other societies to have?” Though he’d love to see a pyramid with this many. Assuming there’s no mothership on top.

Chris smirks affably. “Ask me that again after you’ve snuck a couple thousand feet up and down the loose shale piles some joker decided to name the Hindu Kush mountain range.”

Daniel frowns. Those he’s actually been to. Good point. He falls silent as they clear the level ten guards. He can’t understand much of what Sam and the gunny keep debating, but their conversation morphs as soon once they pass level eleven.

“Now when do I see Langford again?” Chris pounds the handrail eagerly. “Don’t tell me this guy Hammond doesn’t want a functioning research department either.”

Sam lets out a breath. “I keep calling her. I think she’d be here if she could, but she won’t even talk to me about it. There’s no way I can piece this back together without her.”

“Nor should you.” He thumps the wall. “This is ridiculous. Langford spends decades sticking it to D.C. to pull this off, and that puppet O’Neill storms in and blows it all up? You know he lost his clearance even before that nuke? Automatic _mental instability_  suspension based on personal circumstances.” Chris mutters sideways. “Shitbird.”

“Hey!” Daniel probably said that too loudly. “You don’t know what Jack went through back then. It’s…” He trails off with a frown despite Sam staring at him expectantly. Daniel thinks idiotic that Jack won’t tell anyone mad at him about Charlie, but he certainly won’t be the one to do it.

“I’m sure it must’ve been to get automatically suspended.” But Chris is still glaring. “So just imagine how terrible it is for the families of the guys he got killed pulling such a loose cannon stunt anyway. But I guess you don’t have to imagine that, do you?!”

“Chris!” Sam steps between the two men.

“No, you think about that, Doctor.” Chris points at him sharply. “If your ‘friend’ had fought West like any _real_ bird colonel knows to, this never would’ve happened. And anyone else he’d’ve shanghaied would’ve at least done his prep work. No destabilized planet, no galaxy in freefall. No drama. No Apophis raiding us for a new queen!”

Daniel wavers as the ground spins. “You don’t even know him!”

“Fuck yeah, I don’t!” Chris growls but tries to put off his cursing. “What do you even see in that prick? It’s not like he’s anything special.”

“He…” Daniel sinks painfully onto the step. “Jack…cares about people. I saw him, the Abydonians…” God, he is so tired.

Chris scowls. “Gee, thanks, Doc. One whole person in our military ‘cares about people’. I care enough about my people to punch his dipshit lights out.” A muddy fist clenches at the sergeant’s side. “If he cared, he’d’ve done it _right_ or tapped someone else. Not every leader we get is selfless and adroit, Doc, but it’s not like they’re that _rare_. I’ve got one right here if you’d like to meet her.”

Sam resists the urge to open any of her own anger about this. “Thanks, Chris. But we really can’t—”

“He’s right, Captain. Take the compliment.”

Sam stops cold and stares down the next flight of stairs. “Colonel O’Neill. Sir. …Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Jack hops up to meet them. “Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant. Glad you’re here.”

The retired Marine clinches his coiled fist. “I worked here a helluva lot longer than you ever did, Rambo.”

“Sergeant—”

Jack waves Carter off. “It’s fine, Captain. I know I started us off on the wrong foot originally.”

“You tripped over yourself while you were kicking us down the stairs.” The sergeant keeps his high ground on the steps. “How about I escort you back to the stockade and make sure you back the hell off my people?”

Jack looks up calmly, though he’s well aware of how badly a fall from here could hurt. “I’m not here to do that.”

The Marine snorts loudly. “Weird. This guy just like you blew them off as if all they did in fifteen years was find a goddamn ‘on’ switch. Guy had the leadership abilities of a drunken orangutan.” He spits past the officer. “ _Glory_ chaser.”

Sam tries to intercept them without anyone losing balance. “Colonel, sir, I know this is entirely inappr—”

“Let him talk, Captain.” Jack doesn’t break eye contact.

“Oh no, _I_ don’t need to talk, asshole. _You_ need to talk.” The sergeant knocks a fist against Jack’s chest. “ _You_ need to explain to her how you never _intended_ to understand that planet, and the only reason you didn’t nuke it sooner is because you let some rookie geek get you stuck there! Come on, didn’t your old teams bleed enough Cold War blood to wise you up about unstable warlords?”

Daniel tries to stand unsteadily. “You know it was really West—”

“Shut up, Doctor.” Chris shoves him back down. “Not even a colonel who flubs a _single eight-man team_ would pawn off his _own command_ on a flyboy two-star. West didn’t ignore how a superpower you saw turn against a planet could have more planets out there. _West_ didn’t leave a junior captain to face the D-Ring of the Pentagon with a shattered program and not so much as a full _description_ of any alien technology.”

Jack slips a hand around the railing but carefully ensures he doesn’t provoke a fistfight on the stairs. “He’s right, Captain. I shouldn’t’ve left you like that.”

Sam sets a hand on Chris’s shoulder and is relieved they don’t all tumble down the steps. “Thank you, Colonel. We really need to go—”

“Oh, but we’re just getting started!” Though the Marine does drop his fist. “How about you tell her how you _admitted_ to Jackson the Earth Gate was a threat, but I just attended four more kids’ funerals anyway?!”

Daniel tries to stand up again. “That’s really not what—”

Sam freezes beside them. “He…you what?”

Chris finally explodes at the shudder in her voice. “He deliberately fucked us!” The Marine grabs Jack before he falls. “You _knew_ that was what we needed, shitbird! Did you go mute when you came back? Because I don’t care if you went deaf, dumb, blind and lost both hands. Damn, I wouldn’t care if you _died_.” He bounces a finger off the colonel’s jugular. “You’re a bird colonel! That’s why you _went_ there! Write it down, carve it on a wall, type it in the FRED, nail it to her door, tattoo it on your fucking forehead, you brown-nosing, cheese-dicking, self-serving—”

“Let him answer, Chris.” Though Sam can barely talk and breathe at the same time.

“I don’t need him to answer!” Though the Marine does release him again. “I have three guards who personally watched a two-star general hand over a weapon he didn’t recognize but that _burned through_ everything, and this slug-dicking asshole didn’t even bat an eye using it! You couldn’t write _that_ down, you halfcocked, self-centered, slug-jerking, goat-roping _imbecile_?!”

Sam’s eyes snap closed of their own volition. Plasma burns. She still smells the scorched flesh.

Jack manages to get both feet on the landing next to Carter. She looks ashen. He blew this; it’s over.

The sergeant sticks Jack with another jabbed finger. “I don’t know how you survived this long, idiot. But I swear if you put her in the ground as recklessly as you did any of those kids, I am not gonna let you live any longer.”

Jack tries to move fresh air into his lungs. No argument there. “I’m sorry about all this, Sergeant. Captain.”

“Oh, alright. We’re good then.” The Marine scoffs sarcastically. “You know I will give you some credit, asshole. I get that you planned to fuck us over, but this must’ve been way more spectacular than you expected! Who could’ve hoped for the largest galactic war since the rise of a _ten-thousand-year-old_ superpower?”

Jack’s mind snags on the verbiage again. He’s…right.

The Marine pushes harder. “How many billion people do you think you killed with that one stone, _Colonel_ ? I thought idiots like you only existed in movies! Egotistical enough to butt in on a team for technology you’ve never _seen_ without fathoming if anyone there is qualified. _And_ inane enough to traipse into unknown galaxy _with_ a nuke but _without_ mission prep! Damn, I hate General West as much as the next guy, but I really have wonder what made a jerk that smart pick a protégé this stupid.”

Jack watches Carter’s brow crease and has to stop his own from following. That’s true; it doesn’t make sense. He can work with that.

“But you know what I really don’t get?” The Marine jabs Jack’s chest. “I know you hate my Giza geeks and all, but what’d those two-stripe airmen you brought ever do to you? Have you forgotten how much experience went into your old heroics, desk jockey? Or do you just personally prefer killing kids with less experience in special ops than my son has on his high school baseball team?!”

Jack’s budding confidence spirals off as he barely manages to grab the stair rail. Suddenly all he sees are nine-year-olds and baseball gloves. He can’t think like that. This is bad. “Come here, Sergeant.” Jack feels his body move to the landing’s utility closet and wonders what it’ll do there.

Sam tries to get in front of the colonel as he strides past her to wrench open the nearest closet. “Colonel, Sergeant—” Sam feels more than sees both commandos outmaneuver her as door slams closed. And now she is most definitely fired. So much for keeping this job long enough to stop all that from happening again.

 

Jack stares at the corner of the closet and makes himself think clearly. He thinks. It’s more of a shot in the dark. “You know that you’re right about all that. I’d thank you for asking if I didn’t think you’d punch me for it.”

Chris scowls but immediately drops his theatrics. “I would, if you ever thought I’d point this crap out for you. I don’t give a damn about you. If you can’t sort this out with her, I’ll be happy to bash you into a medical retirement.”

Jack nods and takes some of his confidence back. “I’ll answer it all. You did a good job coaching her, you know.”

“I don’t need your approval, buddyfucker.” Chris steps directly under his nose. “Listen carefully. I don’t _care_ how you got yourself into West’s craphole. Maybe she will. All I care about is this: you pull any of that shit again, you get her captured, you stonewall her, you hurt my people or anyone else being a halfcocked idiot, you ever fuck up so bad you wanna kill another goddamn Archduke Ferdinand…” A vein pulses in his forehead. “You call me. I don’t care where the fuck you are or how screwed, you get me. I’ll help your people, and then I’ll beat you so hard we’ll both be sure you’ll never lead anyone anywhere again. Understood?”

Jack finds the appropriate grimace. “That’ll work.” He finds his gaze drifting back toward Carter before he thinks about it.

Chris steps between him and the door angrily. “Do you know the average age of the Americans you got killed since you started playing for West, Colonel? So far.”

Jack swallows audibly. “Twenty-three.”

Chris grabs the doorknob with a scowl. “Twenty-two and nine months.”

Jack winces as the hallway light floods over him. That’s wrong. It’s twenty-one and six months.


	4. That Moves You

**Sublevel Nineteen Stairwell C, 0543 Hours on 14 February 1997 (Day 3 of the SGC):**

Sam can feel Chris grab Daniel and blow past her, but she stays inexorably fixed on the colonel in the doorway. “Sir, I’m very sorry about all of this—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jack pulls away automatically before turning to her. “I take that back. Do think about it, but you’re not in trouble.”

She squints. “Yes, sir. Uh, thank you.” Sam waits and then looks around for the reason he’s still standing there if he’s not about to kill her. “Did you need something, sir?”

Jack blinks back dumbly. “Sorry?”

Sam waves below them vaguely. “You were on Level Nineteen. Did you need something from my department?”

“Oh.” Jack suddenly remembers what the hell he’s doing here. “Uh, yes. No. Not now. Later. Be at the War Room at 0640.”

“ _The_ War Room, sir?” Sam’s eyes widen. “Is that really necessary? I mean I wouldn’t want to be in your way. All of your ways.” All five of what must be the closest-positioned colonels’ desks in the entire U.S military’s way. All of whom are very definitely not going to like the story of the last ten minutes. She tries to smile reassuringly.

“0640, Captain.”

“Of course, sir.” Sam finds herself talking to his back. She exhales and tries not to think on her way down to the locker room. It really doesn’t matter. No matter how bad this all was or how bad it gets again, she still has to win O’Neill over or watch him screw up everything from afar again. So Sam really can’t think about it too much. Because sometime soon after she last walked these halls she so loves, that colonel stepped onto this base, called up a fresh young airman, lied to him, didn’t bother to mitigate any risk to his life, and attended his funeral in total silence.

Four times.

That could’ve been her. By all rights, it _should’ve_ been her. Sam should’ve gone; she should’ve died. Though Chris is right that they wouldn’t’ve missed a lot of that stuff. Giza grew incredibly cautious from fifteen years of handling thirty tons of tertiary high explosive that probably make holes in space-time, might anger super high-tech aliens, and routinely exasperate the Pentagon. Plus Catherine spent decades running first contact expeditions of her own on Earth, and years lecturing Sam about it. And Sam spent years training everyone on it, plus the dangers of extraterrestriality and one-way wormholes. Heck, they’d set up an entire lab for automatically testing connections without sending humans.

They really do know how to be careful. Sam can prove that. She wouldn’t’ve made many of the mistakes O’Neill did.

So God only knows the ones she would’ve.

It’s that, more than anything, that absolutely terrifies her about working at the SGC. Inane or not, O’Neill is a bird colonel. He’s sitting on at least two master’s degrees in military strategy and two decades of planning special operations with the weight of a Cold War apocalypse on his shoulders. And within days he’d shattered the entire galaxy with a nuclear bomb.

Sam, on the other hand, has less than half his leadership experience and none of the training and education, minus a combat tour upgrading special ops helos and the years prepping her Giza team. She really is being foolish to think her presence will stop his recklessness. Compared to what she’s done, his real ground combat—even if it weren’t for black ops and wormholes—is literally a different career, and she’s right at the age limit for cross-training. Not to mention that if they did let her in, the shallow end still requires Ranger school and two years in infantry after initial qualification. A process she’d have to dodge live snakes and staff blasts to finish. Which is one of the many very good reasons they’re supposed to train before they fight.

Someone should remember that next time they want to run off halfcocked and start a galactic catastrophe. And then lie to them.

Sam shudders in her soaked uniform. She does honestly hate O’Neill for that, for causing this. For cutting out Giza, for not listening, for being so careless with those kids, for lying them all into an uninformed hell. For being a conflammed idiot.

Who the heck immediately aims to _blow up_ the highest hostile capitol they’ve ever heard of in the universe?

But still she has to make him accept her. And make dozens of scientists from the most advanced technological undertaking in human history accept him. The guy who kicked them all out and has ‘a little problem with scientists’. Because it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other special ops colonels with all the same covert commands and ground experience and graduate education who _didn’t_ recently nuke a galactic hegemon and a low-budget Apollo Project.

Sam wrenches open the level twenty-five door and shivers at the new rush of air. Yes, part of her really hates O’Neill.

And part of her hates herself.

She blew it. For all of them. Sam dumped everything she had into getting a greenlight for Giza, prepping her team, mitigating the risks. But in the end she lost the politics, and so Giza died and far too many young airmen died with it. She knows things are different now, that it wasn’t all her fault. That West and O’Neill and the DHD and staff weapons and now Apophis and Teal’c change everything. She knows that.

But she still sees their caskets.

That polished oak and their folded flags, three to childless mothers and one to a twenty-five-year-old widow. In direct exchange for her lab’s latest ‘accident’. The fifth through eighth casualties in a war for a shattered galaxy.

She failed them.

Sam skids out of her jog to over-energetically greet a crew of electrical engineers. It’s surprising, since only a few of them are back. Giza isn’t apt to forgive easily, and she’s already spent countless phone calls being harangued by experienced ‘naquadah’ researchers, top computer scientists, prophetic Gate feedback decoders, and dozens of other PhDs and technicians usually far better and more patient than she is. Too bad they now hate anything in uniform.

She really needs to get them back. Not the least because she is now officially in _ten thousand years_ over her head. Forget that she’s not a commando, even the professionals who love snickering at her here are being shorted years more training and millennia of institutional experience. In fact she now has about a week to provide what should be months of off-world basics to all of them, to somehow become as good with Goa’uld technology as they are with Russian.

Sam automatically starts reassessing training priorities in her head. She still doesn’t even know what to _teach_  in the next week. Because she, for one, has absolutely no intention of deploying real people out there without a solid exit plan, and ‘push these seven buttons or else enjoy your stay’ won’t cut it. Though unfortunately that’s all she has at the moment. She starts dissecting DHD crystals in her head again. And then gets body-slammed into a door.

* * *

**Central War Room, 0548 Hours on 14 February 1997 (Day 3 of the SGC):**

Jack doesn’t look up as Charlie plops down across the desk and slides him a plate of something marginally nutritious. “How’d it go?”

His old 2IC shrugs. Charlie has cleaned up, but his hair is still pretty grimy. “Failed everything she can’t hone personally as a side project, which is everything. Fitness is way up there. Don’t ask me about Daniel, though. You?”

Jack frowns at his third strategic doctrine analysis of the morning. “Not great.” He still can’t figure out how to fix his last angry ‘conversation’.

The major watches his friend’s keyboard rattle. “So what now?”

“I’ll do my job.” Jack’s frown deepens, not that he does much else these days.

Charlie cocks an eyebrow. “Just leading SG-1?”

“Being a colonel.” Jack tries to reread the same line of his memo for a third time. Something about uneven polycentric crisis spirals.

Charlie leans into his field of view. “Last I checked colonels don’t run teams in the field. In fact the only interesting mission you’ve seen in five years was shadowing a captain. Quite the impressive fellow if I remember correctly.” Charlie tugs at his own collar.

Jack offers the obligatory grunt. “Ugliest flight commander in my squadron. You really want me just trailing around Carter’s band of intragalactic eggheads?”

His friend laughs outright. “Doubt she’d tolerate you as well as I did. Though it’d be nice if she had a team sergeant who hated you less colorfully.”

Jack looks up irritably. “And who’d you hear that from?”

“You, Jack. Stairwells echo.” Charlie cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t have that out in public on purpose.”

Jack gives up and scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, well, it didn’t sound the right way.”

“No kidding.” Charlie puffs tiredly. “And what’re we doing until you fix that? Or can you suddenly hold down a colonel’s billet being a lousy fisherman?”

“I am not a lousy fisherman.” Jack devolves to hitting random keys on his keyboard. He really did let it get out of hand this morning. He’s better than that. Even if he does deserve it.

“Just stop it, Jack. You’re way too qualified for this small-time crap.” Charlie scowls at where his friend keeps pretending to type. “Hammond would put you in charge of accessions if you fought for it. Or something in acquisition. Run the SG graduate school. Pick anything that’s actually a colonel’s effort and isn’t so…loud.”

Jack starts fiddling with the loose spacebar on his keyboard. “You’d join Jack O’Neill’s Academy of How Not to Start Interstellar Wars?”

Charlie grimaces at the truth in that. “Look, you know I’m sorry Hammond pulled in Makepeace over you. If you don’t want me commanding his Air Force commando element anymo—”

“Keep your day job, Major.” Jack bounces his thumb on the spacebar until it pushes him onto another line. “You’re overdue, and I don’t need to be demoted to major.” No matter what Hammond and his new Marine colonel seem to think.

“You’d prefer Airman Basic?” Charlie’s huffs. “Because if you don’t, I advise you win over at least one subordinate who’ll play ball for you.” He finally snatches the keyboard away from Jack’s grousing. “Which means you have to _talk to her_. You’re going to lose her, you know; she’s a captain with her own flight to worry about. They all are, whoever you pick.”

“You still don’t think it should be her?” Jack fidgets with his hands and mourns his lost doohickey.

Charlie massages his temples. “You know exactly what I think.”

“I know what I’m doing, Major. All evidence aside.” Jack straightens up pointedly. “And no one goes from postdoc to pointman on a Reagan-era project within _two years_ by being smart.” He tries to look unprovoked, though he always gets too visibly immersed in arguments like these.

Charlie shrugs and repeats himself. “Just watch what basket you put what’s left of your eggs in, buddy. I saw her this morning. She needs years of work, even if that Gulf incident is totally true.”

“It is. And I know she does.” Jack still sounds too reproaching.

His friend huffs. “Then go _do_ something about it. You know you don’t need my approval.”

“Yeah.” Jack yanks back the keyboard and slams on the backspace key.

Charlie tugs it away. “Buddy. You cannot keep punishing yourself forever. I don’t blame you for this, but if you don’t—”

“You don’t blame me for blindly stranding my team on an unknown planet, tangling us in a local disaster, killing the top ruler we know of in the galaxy, and starting the largest war of succession since Earth was enslaved ten thousand years ago?”

Charlie stands up over his friend. “You’ve always been bad with inertia, Jack. If you find something that moves you again, you’ll keep moving. Pick it, because I’m not gonna let you sit on your ass forever.”

Jack finally looks up at the man who’d gladly tackle him across this desk. And probably win. “I’m the one that dragged you into this, Charlie. And I’m the one that lied to you.”

His best friend’s expression falters ever so slightly. “Yeah, well, we’ll deal with that later. For now, _move_. I don’t know how else to say it.”

“I can’t leave.” Jack checks his screen and hits the print button sharply.

“You…” Charlie frowns as the colonel slips by him to the printer. “She’s on her way here, isn’t she?” He rolls his eyes. “You know I really hate it when you do that!”


	5. Should’ve Been There

**Level 25 Hallway A4, 0603 on 14 February (Day 3 of the SGC)**

_Previously: So Sam starts dissecting DHD crystals in her head again. And then gets body-slammed into a door._ _  
_

Sam collides with a doorframe and fights to kick back at her assailant. An iron grip doubles her over and hauls her into a darkened room. She bites desperately at the massive hand on her mouth as he dumps her on something vaguely soft and mutes her with a kick as she tries to scream.

“Oh, relax.” A helmet lands on her face. “Time for your combatives test, Cherry.”

Sam launches onto shuddering legs before realizing she should say something. “You wearing a helmet for this?”

He laughs, and Sam knocks her own off the mat. He shrugs. “Suit yourself, but this isn’t some looks-good test. Real disarming and takedowns, then counters and escapes. Survive that and it’s nonlethal room clearing. Knives, maybe. And night-vision ops.” He flicks on the lights.

Sam grabs a set of pads and takes her spot. Whoever this guy is—he has his jacket off—he has eight inches and ninety pounds on her, and she feels keenly where he threw her a minute ago. She waits for the start and immediately launches at him.

It rapidly adds to her painful morning. Sam must’ve really lost her edge since Giza, though she still resets on trained autopilot each time even before her dazed vision realigns. This is like trying to take down a brick wall.

And he is really dragging out the evaluation, even after they switch positions. Then Sam is on defense, and her gymnast’s skill with escapes strains against her exhaustion at the extended pounding she’s taking after the rest of her morning. She forces all her energy into scrambling free of another grappling session and fights back to unsteady feet.

“Suit up. Nighttime room clearing.” It’s all he’s said in half an hour.

Sam manages not to collapse as she puts her gear back on in the now-dark room and upends what’s left of her canteen. God, that feels so good.

“Don’t get water on my strike pads.”

She puts it down without comment. It’s a ridiculous order; they’re both dripping wet. She clips her night vision goggles on and dons the helmet, routing her vision through a monochromatic toilet paper tube with no depth perception.

The commando walks over to the mock doorway beside the mat and slams it closed. “You are not some door-kicking rescuer.” He studies her angrily from under the goggles, as if she’d claim the job of a Delta Force assaulter. “But everyone out there has to handle their own shit. I am an allied prisoner. Your job is to subdue me and explain yourself before I mistakenly kill you. We’re speaking French.” He steps around the doorframe. “It starts when you breach.”

Sam leans beside the door and swivels her narrow green vision around the darkened gym. This is a whole new problem. She did some basic room clearing in advaned level three qualification, but it’s decidedly not a perfected Giza team skill, much less at night. She pulls in a breath and turns to the door.

And ends up smashed flat on her back. Sam counterattacks before even processing that he broke the door himself and jumped her. She tries to struggle properly against his failing grip.

“ _ÇA VA PAS, LA TÊTE?_  PAY THE FUCK ATTENTION, CHERRY!”

Sam blinks and makes her eyes focus despite their green-tinted tunnel vision. She’s thrashing into a training knife gripped at her throat. Oops.

The commando shoves her with a curse and resets the scenario. Over and over and over again. Sam doesn’t even have energy left to count, much less improve or assess what she’s doing. She may or may not still be speaking French. It’s all a miserable learning curve, but she’s used to it. Exhaustion is standard, and God forbid anyone ever give her a full training course before a test. She knows everyone here should have these few years of basics down already, but—

“DID YOU JUST KILL ME, CHERRY?!”

Sam snaps back into reality to find herself twisted in a knot but with her training knife impressively pressed against his gut. She’s just switched back to being the rescuer.

He tosses her off. “Great fucking going, ‘rescuer’. Test’s over.”

Sam curses at herself silently. “We must’ve done twice as many daylight drills. You’re stopping now?”

“I’m  _dead_ now, idiot. Killing one of your guys is the end of the line in this business.”

She follows him through the mock doorway. “Look, Sergeant, sir, whoever you are—”

“Oh for fucksakes, STOP!!”

Sam’s exhausted combat training flattens her against a wall and scans the gym for hostiles. “What’s wrong?”

He turns on her angrily, yanking off his pads. “Just quit already! We’re giving you a way out!”

Sam gapes over her habitually-raised training knife. “I don’t need you to protect me from my job.”

He grabs the knife and shoves her pointedly into the wall. “You’re here to serve where you’ll help most. You really think that’s with some idiot colonel who can’t even recognize the senior military expert of the program  _he ran_ when a two-star general puts you on his team?”

Sam tries to hide her grimace despite being six inches from his face. That’s a sore spot. Which apparently everyone knows about. “I work where I’m assigned.”

“Don’t cop out.” He scoffs in the dark. “He’s  _using_ you, idiot. He’s trying to paint a pretty picture for Hammond so the flyboy won’t let Makepeace disband SG-1. Which better not work, but I need to make you live that long. No matter how much you suck at this.”

Sam studies his hand gripped on her throat. She hadn’t thought of that, not that it matters. She’s not about to watch Colonel O’Neill’s team run off halfcocked from afar again, no matter how much she has to grin and bear it or get repeatedly drowned. “Do I know you?”

The commando grunts over his grip on her. “Trust me, it’s not personal. But if I’m running the combat weather teams here, I need you behind me and not dead. I won’t let you become another O’Neill corpse.”

“ _You’re_ our CO of covert weathermen?” Sam’s eyebrows jump. Captain Jessup is the first special ops scientist she’s ever met. And with only handful in the entire Air Force, he’s apparently maddeningly excellent as both an atmospheric scientist and special ops CO. She was really hoping for a better introduction. “Look, I appreciate this, but it’s really my problem.”

“ _Your_  problem is you can’t fucking do anything. This is your fifth training standard in  _three hours_ , and we haven’t tried a single real mission scenario yet!” He manhandles her pointedly. “And you think  _you’re_  going to set Colonel Idiot straight for us when Brown couldn’t after the longest commando training in the Air Force?!”

Sam blinks in their close quarters. “You knew Airman Brown.” Of course he did; he probably knows all hundred commando weatherman in the Air Force.

“That’s why I  _wanted_ this assignment.” Jessup jerks away to spit. “Youngest guy we ever got. Bright kid busts his ass for four fucking years straight through the pipeline. And  _two weeks_ into his arrival training, O’Neill calls about some ‘exercise’ and if we can spare anyone  _not too important_. We put our rookie on a plane and got back some line about a lab accident. I  _told his fiancé_ that garbage at his funeral. And all this time it was some cheese-dicking Rambo putzing around out there like he didn’t even  _care_ what he was doing?”

Sam feels his grip shake but only shifts enough to see him directly. “I’m so sorry about all this.”

That seems to remind the commando she’s even there. He resumes glaring at the person pinned at the end of his arm. “Look. You know this jerk has a  _sixty percent_ death rate. He’s already lost more people here than we did bringing  _two hundred_  guys into Iran. You are not up for this shit, kid.” He knees her again to emphasize as much. “He’s going to kill you.”

Sam forces air back into her lungs immediately. “And I can’t leave that for someone else. I should’ve been there for your airman.”

The commando slackens on her, unsure and then automatically frustrated at the lost possibility. He drops her with a huff and stalks away. “You’re barely  _five out of_   _nine_  in the basic standards, and you clear rooms like an overexcited Chihuahua. Don’t do anything more stupid.” He flicks on the lights as he walks out. “Though you did just pass some level three combatives.”

Sam blinks dumbly at the final pronouncement before suddenly remembering to check the time. Eight minutes later she’s sprinting down the War Room corridor with a clean uniform and armful of files. She’s not even sure which door it is.

Sam skids to a stop at an innocuous conference room and stares at the number. This can’t be it. She’s going to be late. She tries to read the door again as it slams directly into her, and then she snaps to attention instead of backing up. “Major Kawalsky, sir, good morning.”

Charlie smiles at her and the mud still in her hair. “Captain, what’re you doing here? You know where this is, right?”

Not precisely. “I was instructed to report to the War Room this morning, sir.”

Charlie cocks a theatrical eyebrow. “ _The_ War Room? You? You realize there’s a five-headed colonel dragon in there fighting with itself, right?”

Sam swallows quickly. “I indeed was, sir. But I can wait out here if you think there’s a problem.”

“Hmm.” Charlie stares at her ponderously for a moment. “Nah, go in. Monster needs feeding.”

Sam tries to swallow into her even drier throat. “Sir, if you think—”

Charlie gives in and lets himself laugh. “Relax, Sam. I’m just screwing with you.” He eyes at her more critically. “Besides, I heard you and Jack already had a discussion this morning. How’d that go?”

Sam had almost managed to slip into her ‘they’re only teasing you’ mode. “Sir, I’d like to clarify that Gunnery Sergeant Gedo was completely out of line this morning and none of those views represent Project Giza at large.” Albeit they represent everyone who’s ever worked there.

Charlie tilts his head humoredly. “Not well then?” He sighs. “Jack really is a good guy, you know. We get that doesn’t change anything, but it’s true. And he’s not such a hard-ass when he isn’t shielding something. He can be friendly. You know he sings opera when you get him drunk.”

Sam feels her jaw flap. “Um.”

“Yeah, in four languages. Ask him about it.” Charlie pats her shoulder as he leaves. “Err, emphasis on languages, not on sing.”

Sam turns after him bewilderedly. “Um, Major…” She looks back at the card reader she’s not authorized to open and then at her watch. Still a few seconds early. She sighs and knocks sharply. Hopefully it won’t get any weirder than that.

Jack waits a beat and then opens the door. “Good morning, Captain.”

“Good morning, Colonel.” Sam steps in rigidly. “I just wanted to say again how inappropriate Sergeant—”

“Water under the bridge.” Jack waves it off lightly. “Ah…I see you brought your entire office with you?”

Sam juggles the files and wonders if she can set them down on anything in here. It takes her that long to realize Kawalsky lied about anyone else being inside. “I wasn’t sure exactly what you needed on Level Nineteen, sir.”

Jack takes a bunch from her and looks over the indecipherable titles. “And you thought it’d be one of…these?”

Sam makes herself stop fidgeting to ensure she doesn’t touch anything. “What is it you do need, sir?”

“You.” Jack takes in her stymied expression as it shakes some rust off his urge to grin. “So you can put those down now.” He taps his overflowing desk waits as she unloads awkwardly onto it. “How’d your morning go, by the way?”

“I’m fine, sir.” She swallows. “I know I haven’t met the standards, but—”

“Jeez, Sam, no one expected you to  _pass_ much.” The colonel looks genuinely shocked at her. “The first-year guys in my own training squadron wouldn’t do that. Though unfortunately they get a lot longer. No need to insult us by thinking it can happen that fast.”

Sam works her jaw quickly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

“’Sokay.” Jack snags a thick binder off his desk. “This is the current SG training. We’re really shafting everyone on off-world years, but I’m particularly sorry I can’t get you two years in the Special Tactics pipeline, an overseas expeditionary command, and a special ops master’s degree beforehand. You still want to try?”

Sam jerks up sharply. “Sir, I understand that I come at this from a very different background, but I assure you professional Gate understanding will be directly and uniquely useful off-world. You can’t underestimate how long it’ll take even experienced commandos to develop Gate-based thinking. So while I’m not yet an expert, I’m the closest—”

Jack makes himself endure a sentence longer than he usually does. “Captain, really. Yes or no question.”

Sam feels her teeth clink. “Yes, sir. I do.”

“Then you’ll want this.” He gives her the binder and flips it open to a chapter. “And maybe you can give me an example of that Gate-based thinking? Because I can sketch out cultural immersion and terrain conditioning well enough, but frankly I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sam looks down at the pages. It’s chapter ten of the standard Special Tactics career manual, plus various one-pagers stuck in arguing for changes everywhere from cultural training to communication protocols. She flips through the chapter by rote and tries to decipher his perspective overall. “Sir, you’re a…” She looks up to see he’s already gone.

Jack cranes his neck from where he’s walked over to. “Have at it, Captain. Jerk? Idiot?”

“…Really good writer.” Sam turns around labyrinth to find him back at his desk.

Jack picks up the memos he wrote for her this morning and carries them with him. “Two years at the Pentagon and you’re still surprised colonels haveta do more than grunt?”

Sam lets that lie and follows him into a sea of tables covered in fake terrain, troop symbols, and zillions of little flags. “Sir…are you really planning offensive operations this early?”

Jack hands her the memos and picks up a model to fidget with. “We’re looking at if we should act on any of Teal’c’s specific information before it goes stale. Is that a problem?”

Sam peers around the morass and tries to buck herself up. “It’s looks to be getting complicated quickly.”

“I think we both know it’s getting complicated significantly later than it should have.” Jack fidgets his admission into the tiny DHD model. “You think your guys can take it?”

Sam swallows. Most of her ‘guys’ are either twenty-year-old rookies or sixty-year-old geniuses ducking her calls. “We’ll manage whatever we have to, sir.”

Jack turns on her sharply. “Do  _not_ do that again.” He jabs at the captain’s now flash-frozen form. “Don’t ever lie to me, Captain. Everyone who used to work here is still cursing my name from afar, and that Control Room is just a bunch of kids who can’t do their own laundry or taxes. When you disagree, do it.” Jack drops his hand and pretends again that he’s not scolding himself. General West was the one time in his life he didn’t tell a superior they were stupid, and look where it got him.

“Just because it looks good on a tabletop doesn’t mean it’ll work.” Sam feels more than makes the words exit her mouth. She jerks away to reminds herself this is exactly the kind of recklessness she’s here to stop. “Even just look at those UAV and artillery paths: that would take months more study of diverse off-world gravity and atmospherics, much less navigation and communication. And that’s before maintainer and controller training.”

Jack nods his head satisfactorily. “And what do you propose?”

Sam squints at the lack of annoyance in his voice. “We need to train, sir, and start massive R&D. And you need to internalize how much the Gate changes things, everything from tactics to politics. It changes them as much as telecommunication or the airplane. The Goa’uld are  _ten thousand years_ ahead of us.”

Jack makes himself stop fidgeting. “True. But unfortunately wars don’t wait for anyone to catch up.”

Sam feels her mouth flap. Sometimes they do if you don’t  _start_ them. “Yes, sir. I will develop clearer timelines on our forthcoming combat capabilities.”

“Good.” Jack really needs to stop reading her face. “We have to assume this avalanche is already rolling. That Apophis sees Earth as the wellspring for him it was for Ra ten thousand years ago. And that he’s probably right, and he’ll want to invade with a hegemon’s armada designed to protect it. Because if that is happening, we’ve missed the chance to stop it.” Jack stares at a model Humvee ambulance. “I know that. And I know you could’ve helped me back then. I’m sorry. I need your help now.”

Sam’s eyes snap to him bewilderedly. He’s agreeing with this all far too easily. “Yes, sir. …Can you share what problems you’re facing with this raid plan?” She blinks back an odd upwell of sympathy in her stomach.

Jack scrubs his face and turns to examine the table.

The door flies open behind them. Sam finds herself snapped to attention without looking.

“Hey, Steve.” Jack boxes up his thoughts and greets the new arrival. And then glances sideways at Carter. “Stop standing like that.”

Sam falls to parade rest. “Yes, sir. I’ll just…” She points as far away from here as physically possible.

The new guy walks up with a chuckle. It’s another colonel, of course, this time commander of the Gate and Control Rooms. “Sure. I mean, if you can’t help us. Guess you can just goof off until you oversee my Control Room training next shift.”

Jack smirks back. “Carter’s here to teach us how to think like a Gate officer.”

Sam’s face stays schooled despite the indulgent tease in their voices. “Good morning, Colonel Varga. Of course I’d help with anything you need, sir.”

“That’s a dangerous thing to say in a War Room, Captain.” The new colonel grins and plucks a bunch of papers off his desk. “But personally, I’m really struggling with the notion that I can’t fly a seven-barreled cannon and five tons of bombs around other planets.” He plops the stack of diagrams in front of her. “And it means we have to deploy all kinds of Gate and Control Room forces off-world to fill the gap. Weapons blind spots, communication shortfalls, et cetera. I’m still working it out with ground guys, but I need this simpler.”

Sam’s eyes drop to the mass of symbols on the papers. He’s not kidding. She struggles just to picture it all, much less glean any tradeoffs. Pages flip through her fingers nervously as four very experienced eyes bore into her clueless head. Sam sucks it up and looks at them. “I’m afraid I really don’t have any background as a mechanized officer, sir. Is this all supporting an artillery battery?”

“Maps K through—” Varga stops and makes himself simplify. “Some of it, like for targets behind the Gate. So if that ‘Gate thinking’ gives you a way to fire a Mach two rocket from Earth and land it  _behind_ the destination Stargate, I’m all ears.”

Sam drops her eyes to the table to wonder how she dug a hole this large so quickly. Then she blinks in surprise and knocks the Gate model onto its back.

Both colonels squint at it.

“Just an idea.” She gestures quickly. “Obviously knocking over the Gate would create major problems with gravity and terrain gradients, but it could more than make up for them in deployment the simplicity you need. I’ll get the lab and artillery guys together and draft out an initial assessment. When do you need it by?”

The Earthside commander looks up sharply. “Eight hours ago. But 1200 today will do. We’ll let you get to work, Captain. And get some of that experience into my Control Room trainees.”

Sam lugs her files out the door and resists the urge to lean on it as it closes. Actually implementing artillery like that would be a huge project. The gravity lab guys are going to kill her.

Jack stares at the closing door and makes himself commit to talking to her correctly soon. Then he holds out his hand until the other colonel coughs up a twenty dollar bill.


	6. Not That Simple

**Cheyenne Mountain Missile Silo Bravo, 0659 on 14 February (Day 3 of the SGC)**

“Unscheduled off-world activation! … SG-4 requests immediate show of force!”

Sam slips into the mock Control Room just as Sergeant Harriman reads the training scenario off his screen. An ad hoc group scrambles to life around her, everyone from young artillery directors to gawky cryptologic linguists uncrossing their eyes at five-inch technical manuals. Sam slips on her commander’s headset but stays back. The overwhelmed flyboy serving as shift supervisor just saw his first Gate yesterday, but fortunately he can stay overwhelmed in training for now. He skims frantically around the dozens of screens now flashing ground and balloon sensor data.

Harriman calls out over the din. “Balloons read fifteen degrees-F with twelve degree dewpoint, twenty-eight barometric, thousand-foot visibility, eight-hundred-foot ceiling overcast, thirty-knot winds gusting fifty at three hundred to two-forty degrees off Gate. Three minutes to astronomical dusk. Hanging up and dialing back! We are four minutes from the next team’s return window.”

Fake chevrons light up as a dozen airmen fumble to customize UAVs and artillery while their pilots fidget impatiently in the Control Room.

“Chevron seven locked! Smokescreen up, UAVs one through three away. UAV two is down! Requesting backup launch. UAV one also down! ” Sergeant Harriman reads off his screen as the shift supervisor finally runs up beside him.

“Backup launches denied.” Lieutenant Harjo scans the scene worriedly. “Let’s figure out what’s going on; route UAV three to the team’s last known location.” He presses his radio call. “SG-4, one UAV enroute heading one-ninety going two klicks off Gate, ETA one minute. What else do you need? SG-4?”

“No radio contact, sir.”

He pinches his brow. “Dammit, we need to stop trying these real-distance scenarios. No one even gets how to coordinate operations right at the Gate! Ask Central again for a problem that happens at the DHD.”

Sam stares expectantly at that request as the lieutenant lets the action degenerate. Apparently they really do have a Gate thinking problem. “Lieutenant.” She steps in and pulls the young man to her ear. “If it’s not a Gate-area problem, who _dialed_ the Stargate?”

The twenty-three-year-old’s jaw slackens at his misread. He jerks back with far too salient horror. “Launch UAVs four through eight! Minimal smokescreen; I need a full picture of the Gate area!”

Harriman blinks and the rapid one-eighty but gets the Gate Room scrambling to do all that as well as possible. It’s a full ninety seconds before he even speaks again. “UAV four away. UAV four damaged. UAV five failed launch. UAV six away. UAV seven away. UAV seven crashed. UAV eight away. UAV eight unresponsive.”

Sam winces painfully. So much for figuring out what’s going on and not making the crews try too much. She tells herself to stay put and so he can learn that lesson.

“Sir!” The pilot of UAV six leans into his simulator headphones, listening to someone read him what he should be seeing. “We have a uniformed body behind the Gate, possibly two. May be moving.”

Lieutenant Harjo yanks forward the Gate Room microphone. “Secure the Gate area _now_! Rear and DHD, standby rescue!”

Sam’s eyes bulge at the chaos that erupts below them. Artillery, UAVs, ground equipment, medics, and rescue all scrum around the ramp with no coordination. They’re overwhelmed. She steps forward and kicks herself for trusting that he’d learn this lesson with real airmen working for him.

“PAUSE EXERCISE! MEDIC!” Half a dozen voices scream up from below.

Everyone’s breath catches as a real stretcher zooms into the fake Gate Room. Lieutenant Harjo runs down the stairs with a curse and a prayer.

Sam addresses the tense room he just abandoned before following. “Standby, debrief!”

The lieutenant skids straight into the Gate Room mess. “What happened? Everyone okay?”

Some older sergeant launches into his face. “There’s a bone is sticking out of the kid’s goddamn arm! What the hell were you trying to show off doing that out of the blue?!”

The lieutenant tries to get through to the stretcher. “All I did was order a proper rescue—”

Three more top sergeants erupt in a volley of rage that Sam has to fight to win. “GENTLEMEN! All of you, outside. Now.” She herds all five guys out the nearest door and sends a look up to Sergeant Harriman. “Safety drills.” He nods solidly, making her relieved that he doesn’t look publicly upset with her. Twenty minutes ago she was lecturing O’Neill about not pushing too fast, and now she has an eighteen-year-old with a compound fracture to his arm.

Sam pushes her own problems aside as the stretcher zooms away and the blast door closes behind her fuming subordinates. First things first. “Anyone ever fights like that in public again, they’re fired.”

It earns her a stilted chorus of ‘yes ma’ams,’ though they all know it’s more a fact than a personal threat from a junior captain.

Sam studies the sergeants again to try to peg if they’re just pissed at the situation or legitimately desperate for intervention. Her gut says the latter, and maybe that this is bigger than just the lieutenant. This could be bad.

And then more yelling erupts down the far hallway.

Sam cuts off her planning. “Go to the office and talk. _Productively_.” She grimaces and spins to run. Yes, she definitely broke open something bigger here. “AIRMEN!”

Except that Sam finds only one airman, and he’s pinned at the outstretched arm of an alien five-star general. The archeologist beside them worriedly eyes the young guard’s holstered sidearm.

“—MURDERER! Kill me, too! KILL ME OUT HERE INSTEAD!” The airman’s spit and unwieldy punches splat onto the Jaffa’s bulging bicep.

“AIRMAN!” Sam hasn’t stopped running. She skids to a stop behind them and disarms the kid automatically. It’s only then that she realizes someone has very, very unfortunately opened the Gate Room beside them.

The young airman finally registers the female voice and deduces the obvious owner. “…Ma’am.” He comes to a shaking attention despite the iron hand still clamped on his neck.

Sam tries not to let her heart pound out her mouth as she looks up at Teal’c. “General, if I may.”

The First Prime examines her briefly and releases his grip.

Sam immediately slips between them. The mammoth Jaffa’s breath flattens her hair as she prays he doesn’t actually kill someone here. Sam makes herself turn and face Gate Room, which is now framed by a new and very chagrin Security Forces lieutenant who arrived by opening the blast door. “Lieutenant, take your airman to your office.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lieutenant Kersh leaps forward hastily but then taps his unused handcuffs.

Sam shakes her head discreetly and hopes that’s the right answer. The crowd is still staring at her through the doorway. They look like a high school yearbook photo. “I trust we’re all professional enough not to be distracted from the defense of our planet.”

Sergeant Siler offers her a gruffly reassuring nod and moves to close the door.

At which point Sam very, very carefully turns around to face Teal’c. It’s only then that her initial fear of watching the Jaffa literally murder an airman—or her—finally fades. He looks…entirely unmoved. “Please allow me to sincerely apologize for that, Master Teal’c. I don’t intend any harm to come to you here.”

Daniel starts translating, but Teal’c simply nods. He recognizes this child, one of several he first saw while murdering the boy’s friends in front of him.

Sam studies the alien more closely. They can’t speak a word to each other, but she can tell he won’t go after this kid. This is more like any one of her last hundred officers’ meetings than a potentially lethal street fight. Though as she studies the alien more, she finds a glint of something that never would’ve occurred to her to check. Fear. “I don’t intend to let anyone hurt you.” She repeats it, and sees what might be a flicker of some other incongruity. Surprise.

Daniel rubs at his neck and stops translating. “This is all my fault, Sam. I thought Teal’c’s latest writings might help, and I didn’t…” He shakes his head. “The guard said not to go in, so we just stopped—Wait, who’re you calling?”

Sam has walked over to the wall phone and puts the receiver to her ear. “I just watched an armed guard attack a defected five-star general, Daniel. I have to handle this.”

Daniel squirms. “The guard just got a little worked up for a second. He’s only a kid, Sam.”

God, trust her, she knows. “It’s not that simple, Daniel—Yes, this is Captain Carter for Colonel Varga.” She sucks in a breath. So much for good impressions.

Somewhere above her, one of the colonels she’d barely managed to impress earlier snags up his phone. “Carter! Great timing. We’re just about to tell the Joint Chiefs all about our impressive through-Gate firepower.” He leans into his receiver as the voice keeps reporting. “ _What kind_ of altercation?!”

Suddenly every other colonel in the War Room jerks around to watch him. Jack gets up to stand between the pilot and the screen where a grainy picture of General Hammond is about to appear.

Colonel Varga glances at the clock in the corner. “Captain, you have forty seconds to tell me how you’re going to get yourself back in control of this situation without arresting one of the few Gate guards we have left.”

Sam pinches her brow at the mock Gate Room door. “Advise starting with demotion and revoking Gate Room clearance. I can fix this, sir.” And then the original metaphorical shoe kicks her in the head. “But I do need a temporary stand down; we have an unrelated hospitalization injury.” She winces.

Varga stands up to turn his back as the video screen flickers to life. “All approved. Get back in control, now. Send a clear message and get them doing something smart. I’ll be down soon unless the Joint Chiefs kill me for any other dozen reasons.” He drops the phone and walks up beside Jack with a tight smile.

Jack keeps grinning at Hammond’s lecture while the other colonel whispers in his ear.

Hammond eyes them both skeptically through the camera. “Everything alright back there, you two?”

Jack pulls a breath in through his nose. “Nothing unexpected, General. I’m sure our staff has a handle on it.”


	7. One Good Sign

**Mock Gate Room, 0731 on 14 February 1997**

Jack slips through the open blast door and stands quietly beside the rows and rows of young technicians arrayed around their cranes and howitzer guns.

“…Those are our new priorities of work. Remember we’re here to think through these problems, so share your ideas with your senior sergeants. Are there any questions?” Sam finishes her speech to the traditional dead silence. She isn’t bad at routine public speaking per se, but she’s not what you’d call inspiring or even conversational. Especially not with airmen so fresh out of basic training that they can’t tell a captain from a grizzly bear. Her eyebrows rise as someone’s hand actually lifts up. It’s properly straight but visibly shaking, and his jacket is off because he knows he needs to remove the rank from his sleeve. “Yes, Airman.”

The hand drops back to attention mechanically. “Airman Rao, ma’am. Level Ten Security Forces Section. I…” He swallows repeatedly, just like he did when she’d had to talk to him alone. “Thank you, ma’am. For letting me…” He fades off nervously.

For a second Sam feels more on the spot than he is. She really didn’t want to advertise that she helped him keep his job after he punched a defected general. And she can feel O’Neill staring critically at her. “Just pay it forward, Airman.” She swallows sharply and snaps back to attention. “Squadron, TENCH-HUT! Carry out the orders of the day.”

Jack watches carefully as Carter answers some of the anxious sergeants that crowd in on her. He waits at the command office until she weaves to him. “Good job.”

Sam musters a thanks that sounds as mechanical as his congratulations and swipes open the office door. “Did you need something, sir?”

Jack scrubs his hair and flicks on the lights before following. “We need to talk.”

“Ma’am, I—” A lieutenant who’s apparently been hiding in the office starts and then stops cold. “Colonel, sir, I—”

Jack cocks his head at the traditional deer-in-the-headlights kid in front of him. “Did you need to talk to Captain Carter, Lieutenant?”

Lieutenant Harjo’s mouth flaps as faces her again. “I, I just wanted to apologize for ordering everyone the way I did, ma’am. I can’t believe that airman’s arm is really broken.”

Sam feels Colonel O’Neill’s spotlight swing back on her for the third time this hour. “Pacheco will be okay, Lieutenant. I shouldn’t’ve let you get in that position. I’m sure we’ll get much better at this.” She pauses expectantly, but he’s started watching O’Neill’s shadow as if it’s here to kill him. Which is possible. Sam steps in front. “But we won’t get better if you stay in the office.”

The lieutenant’s eyes widen as his body jerks upright at her tone. “Right, ma’am. Thank—good morning. Good morning, Colonel.” He disappears with an expression that makes Sam wish she had someone to save her from these things.

She turns warily back to the colonel. “Sir, I’ll have to direct you back to Lieutenant Colonel Varga if you’re here intercede personally. I won’t allow someone—”

Jack nods satisfactorily. “I’m only here for you, Captain. Though unfortunately Varga is…preoccupied with the Joint Chiefs. Something about not being ready for the basic capabilities demonstration next week?”

Sam finds herself shuffling papers distractedly. “That’s not the crews’ fault, sir. If anything it’s mine. I vastly underestimated the diversity of environments we’d need to operate in: for gravity, temperature, planet rotation, atmospherics, on and on. It’s ruining our communication and navigation solutions, not to mention corrosion handling and payload adjustment. But that’s really not your problem, sir.”

“It’s all my problem, Captain. But it sounds like a lot of work.” Jack takes a last breath. “I wouldn’t want to distract you with SG-1.”

Sam jerks upward immediately. She knew he’d still pull something like this. “Sir, my job is to build a unit that can handle this, not do it all myself. And there’s a reason General Hammond put me on SG-1. You have earthbound duties yourself; it’s not like we can have full tactical responsibilities.” Plus she apparently needs to keep him from charging around like an ostensibly immortal sixteen-year-old. Sam doesn’t know what O’Neill’s earthside job is, but here’s hoping it’s warming someone’s chair in a broom closet.

“I’m not kicking you off, Captain.” Jack successfully ignores most of the look on her face. “I just want to make sure you’re really invested. We can’t do full mission tempos, but I intend to make us useful on a larger scale. It won’t be an easy road for you if you take it.”

Sam bites down on her rising apprehension. This guy on a larger scale could destroy the fabric of space-time. So apparently this really is the hill she’s going to die on. “Sir, the off-world teams have plenty of large-scale guidance. Colonel Makepeace has a staff office; so does General Hammond. Major Kawalsky will too, if he’s really Air Force expeditionary commander. I understand if you expected Makepeace’s job by seniority, but there’s no role for something like this.”

Jack tries to look unbothered by the jab. He has no idea who’s senior, and Carter knows damn well that he’s degraded Hammond brought in an extra colonel at all. “SG-1 wouldn’t be a headquarters like them. We’re cramming a full galaxy’s combatant command inside a nuclear bunker. There’s plenty more to do.”

Sam resists the desire to just argue and tries to get in front of him. “If you wanted that, I’d need authorizations for all my Giza staff. And I assume you’d give me the intelligence office.”

Jack blinks at the maneuver. “Uh, no.” He finds himself fidgeting with her stapler.

“ _No?_ ” The valve on Sam’s anger cracks open. “Sir, I don’t care what you think of Giza, we were _better at this_ than you. You can’t keep missing even the obvious stuff, in intelligence especially. If you think I’m going to sit in a corner while some guy who saved your life in ‘Nam and has never seen a Stargate before—”

“ _Captain!_ I am not offering you intelligence.” Jack breathes heavily. She is definitely making this as hard as she’s trying to. “I’m offering you second-in-command.”

Sam stares back at him starkly. “What, so you can bail out and leave me holding the bag again?”

“No.” Jack knows that was meant to hurt, but he still can’t hide his wince. “Because I think you’re good for it. You and Teal’c are among the most valuable people on the planet, and I intend to build something worthy of your experience.” This sounds really brilliant to him for a second, before it becomes by far the stupidest thing he could’ve said.

“ _Colonel._ ” Sam’s not sure she’s ever felt this angry. “I am not going to be your _reason_ for the next mess you make.”

“No one’s screwing up anything.” Jack winces around the sharply familiar taste of his own foot. “I have a job to do, and I have twenty years of special ops leadership experience to do it with. I won’t rob all the heroes I used to lead by abandoning them for one single team. That’s literally why you call me a colonel.”

“And does General Hammond agree with that, sir?” Sam lets herself scowl. They also called him colonel when he deliberately robbed Giza of its own leadership experience and stuck it with his halfcocked version.

“General Hammond respects what he doesn’t know about ground combat.” Jack keeps himself forcibly unaffected. “Which means he knows he can either demote me to master sergeant with an SG-1 patch or watch me build five echelons of leaders underneath me. All I’m asking is if you’re one of them.”

Sam huffs out loud. It feels really good to be angry with him. “Sir, second-in-command for a colonel is a major’s billet. I’m _five years_ from the promotion window; you know exactly how irresponsible it is. It’s like skipping pre-med to residency. It’s more irresponsible than assuming everyone in the unit you just took over is completely incompetent for its mission.”

Jack lets that hit him in the face. “I didn’t cut Giza out because I thought you were incompetent.”

“That’s why you still claimed a personal monopoly on Stargate value _even after_ you ruined fifteen years of work in a week, left us with nothing, and heard General Hammond personally put me on your team?” Sam steps toward him and very fortunately bumps into a chair.

Jacks again reminds himself it’s his fault that he’s arguing this with a junior captain in a broom closet. “I wasn’t trying to hurt Giza, Captain. I just didn’t want any of you associated with what I was about to do. I hoped you’d survive it.”

“Then why bother?!” Sam outright yells at a superior officer for the first time in her life rather than try to figure any of this out.

“Because I…” Jack clams up. It’s not until then that he really decides. He likes to think that it blindsided him, that he hadn’t just been looking for an excuse to tell her because it’s hard. Because he wants it. Jack O’Neill would never ask for a position like this, never risk manipulating her out of her own good judgment. He knows this job is never about him. He’s had twenty years proving as much. But it’s about to keep him up some very lonely nights. “I came here to die.”

Sam feels herself huff. “Colonel, whatever you’re playing at—”

“It’s the truth.” Jack stares at the wall. “West and I got into a…debate. About Langford’s program, about them all. I thought he was supportive, but he’s just another jet jockey that doesn’t respect the experience of guys spending their lives fighting and dying below him. I react to people questioning my experience on that very personally. Too personally.” Jack looks up and makes himself say it. “Captain. West sent me to Abydos because he wanted me to die.”

Sam feels her jaw flap. She’s now been completely outmaneuvered.

“I wanted to die, too.” The blood stops in Jack’s ears. He doesn’t want to do this anymore. “Because six days before that mission, I accidentally killed my son.”

Sam feels her face blanche. This can’t be what’s going on.

“We’d had some break-ins nearby, I moved my .45, he…” Jack can’t see anymore. “He was nine years old.”

Sam finds herself seated and shaking in a chair. She grasps after the thought floating in front of her. “And they put you back on _duty_?”

Jack’s mind trudges forward sluggishly. “He forcibly retired me until he could manage nuclear release authority. I was supposed to stay there with it. He said it was me or someone else. I didn’t think it through properly. At all.” Jack can’t get out of the fog. It takes him forever to realize the other person West meant was _her_.

Sam stares back at him blindly. That can’t be what happened. _This_ is how they started to largest war in the history of the known galaxy?

“I know what I did to your people, Captain. And I knew I was wrong, on Earth and out there. But for the first time…” Jack forces his head up. “For the first time in my life, I wanted the easy way out. So I made everyone else pay for it.”

Sam’s vision blurs despite their close quarters. She’s been duking it out with a man who lost his child? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jack lets the stale air out of his chest. “Because it doesn’t change anything. You know that. Getting called colonel is a sacred trust from thousands of troops and millions of people.” Jack rubs at his collar. “It takes two decades of leadership to earn, and barely a single decision to break.” His mind trips back over all that time, the long years of commando training, his teams, staff positions, bigger commands. It took him so long. It took him everything.

Sam swallows back the knot in her stomach. “You were trying to protect us, weren’t you? From West. You _wanted_ to make it just your fault.” He’d said that already, but of course she hadn’t listened to him then.

“Unfortunately I only managed one of those two.” Jack pushes a breath out his nose and tries to make it sound normal. “I know what I did, Captain. This isn’t about forgiveness. I know being sorry doesn’t make me competent. I just want you to know I won’t do it again. You weren’t the first person I hurt back then.”

Sam’s eyes refocus bewilderedly. “Sir, I never said—”

“I want you to be the _last_.” Jack finishes with a tired sigh. “I’ll let you get back to work. These guys outside clearly need you for now.”

“I’ll keep SG-1.” Sam watches him turn away. “You should’ve told me earlier.”

Jack winces tiredly. “There are a lot of good people out there who deserve your compassion a lot more than I do, Captain.”

“It’s not compassion.” Sam exhales flatly and makes her legs stand up. She still has the same obligation. This doesn’t really change much. “I have to be there.”

Jack turns around fully. He’s not even sure what he wants anymore. “You don’t have to decide now.”

“Sir, now I know General West hates you enough to kill you.” Sam lets out her breath. “In my professional opinion, that’s at least one good sign.”

Jack’s eyes widen and blink dumbly. He can work with that. “Then I guess we ought to save the world.”

Sam stares blankly as he turns sharply for the door. “Right now?”

The klaxons go off above them.

  


THE BEGINNING

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of _The Rest You Earn_ , but yes, I do have a story for those klaxons.


End file.
